83 - IDENTITY PROJECT The future is here: A private company claims it can use Aadhaar to profile people - Scroll.In

IDENTITY PROJECT The future is here: A private company claims it can use Aadhaar to profile people - Scroll.In

by Usha Ramanathan

Even before the Aadhaar Bill becomes law, corporate ambition to use the massive database has spilled out in the open.



In recent days, radio listeners may have heard advertisements for a company called TrustID offering “India’s 1st Aadhaar based mobile app to verify your maid, driver, electrician, tutor, tenant and everyone else instantly”. The app boasts it can do this in "less than a minute". Its punchline: “Shakal pe mat jaao, TrustID pe jaao.” Don't go by the face, use TrustID.

Think about what this means. A private company is advertising that it can use Aadhaar to collate information about citizens at a price. It says this openly, even as a case about the privacy of the information collected for the biometrics-linked government database is still pending in the Supreme Court. Already, the court has told the government that it has to limit the uses of the Aadhaar number. Even the Bill that is to govern the project has still not yet been signed into law and will come up for discussion in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.



This should not surprise anyone who has been watching how the project has been unfolding.

Thus far, the Aadhaar project, which seeks to database the whole population, has been marketed as a means of removing leakage and corruption and ghosts and duplicates in the welfare and subsidy system. The title of the law that was passed last week by the Lok Sabha – the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies and Services) Bill 2016 – is intended to evoke the idea that this is about the state gaining control over the welfare system.

Very little was heard about the interest private companies would have in this information data base. It is not until the 2016 Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha that we were told, expressly, that just about any person or company may draw on the Aadhaar system for its purposes. There are no qualifications or limits on who may use it and why. It depends on the willingness of the Unique Identification Author of India, which is undertaking the project, to let them become a part of the Aadhaar system.

During the debate in Lok Sabha, Congress MP Rajeev Satav, raised a question on clause 57 of the Aadhaar Bill which permits private entities – airlines, telecom, insurance, real estate companies – to use the Aadhaar number. Finance minister Jaitley did not respond to the question. The ruling MPs passed the Bill within three hours, rejecting all proposed amendments.

This is part of the imagination that has spurred the project.

Nandan Nilekani, the former UIDAI head who has been the chief spokesperson for the project, called it, not an identity, but an"identity platform" on which apps may be built by any entrepreneur. In 2011, the Economics Times reported what Nilekani said in his address to dozens of software developers in Bangalore who were there for a "UID conference":

"It's really up to the imagination and innovation of the people … In some sense we believe it will be game changing...we don't see this project just as giving someone an ID card. This will create a national-level online identity management platform."

In 2012, in an interview to McKinsey & Company, Nilekani said:

"But what’s equally important is that we expect to see a lot more innovation because of the platform’s open API. That’s the best way to do this: the government builds the platform but makes it open so that individual creativity and entrepreneurship can build more solutions. Ultimately, what we’d like to accomplish in this role is to create a thriving application ecosystem around the platform. Over the next few years, we’d like to see more apps developed by both the public and private sectors…“

At an event held in New Delhi in 2013, he said:

“So that creates platforms…. Now, you have used government benefits to jumpstart this thing. But, once you create the link between the ID and the bank account, you can then start using it for commercial payments. .. that would then be a business to person thing. The next step would be person to person …”

These are just a few illustrations. In fact, several people working with the UIDAI in the initial years left to start ventures that will find ways of leveraging the Aadhaar platform. One instance is Srikanth Nadamuni who joined Khosla Labs, a Bay Area entrepreneurial venture, to expand the uses of Aadhaar.

In June 2015, there was an "Aadhaar application hackathon" mentored by “experts from UIDAI, Khosla Labs, AngelPrime and Morpho” to create apps based on the system.

This corporate ambition to exploit the business opportunities of this massive population database is now a part of the law that the government seems in a hurry to pass.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

82 - UID- Budget by Usha Ramanathan - Aadhaar Blog

UID- Budget by Usha Ramanathan



The Finance Minister in his budget speech has said that they will be giving the `aadhaar platform’ a statutory framework. He intends to introduce it in a bill for Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services. All benefits, subsidies and services funded from the consolidated fund of India are to be channelled through the aadhaar platform. Interestingly, Mr Jaitley now says that the “aadhaar number or authentication shall not, however, confer any right of citizenship or domicile”.

The proposal does not, of course, amount to a law that will govern the UID project. This is merely an attempt to legalise the compulsion that the UPA and the BJP governments have been practising all along, in wanton violation of the Supreme Court’s orders. (There are many of these orders, by the way, made on 23 September 2013, 26 November 2013, 24 March 2014, 16 March 2015, 11 August 2015, 15 October 2015 – and they have been observed mainly in the breach.)

This is a simplistic response to what is really a complex matter. There is a bill pending in the Rajya Sabha – the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 – which has been considered by a Parliamentary Standing Committee. The Standing Committee, cutting across party lines, and chaired by Mr Yashwant Sinha, rejected the Bill and the project for a range of reasons that they set out in the report. Those concerns need to be addressed. There are a range of cases challenging the project on grounds that include convergence and surveillance, biometrics as untested technology, the role of foreign firms connected with the security establishments in their countries and the national security implications it raised, privacy, data as property, threat of exclusion from services and entitlements, the absence of a law governing the project. These cannot be brushed aside. The government argued, in the context of the UID project, that privacy is not a fundamental right, and convinced the court that it should refer the matter to be decided by a larger bench. The court obliged, and the question now hangs in unhappy uncertainty till it is heard and decided by the larger bench. Till it is decided, it is the citizen’s rights that need to be safeguarded.

If the government intends to use aadhaar, it must surely at least find out if it can work as identification? In the past six months at least, the UIDAI page carries an admission that biometrics is still in the stage of being researched. A Unique Biometrics Centre of Competence has been set up in the UIDAI whose `mission’ is to “design biometrics system that enables India to achieve uniqueness in the national registry. The endeavour of designing such a system is an ongoing quest to innovate biometrics technology appropriate for the Indian conditions”. In the opening section titled “UBCC and Research”, the document reads: “Biometrics features are selected to be primary mechanisms for ensuring uniqueness. No country has undertaken to build a national registry at the scale and accuracy as UIDAI initiative. Nature and diversity of India's working population adds another challenge to achieving uniqueness through biometric features. Like other technology fields such as telecommunication, we do not have experience like developed countries to leverage for designing UIDAI's biometrics systems…Therefore, it is necessary to create a UIDAI Biometrics Centre of Competence that focuses on the unique challenges of UIDAI”.

This comes as no surprise. In January-February 2010, in a document that was an invitation to biometrics consultants, the UIDAI had been candid: “There is a lack of a sound study that documents the accuracy achievable on Indian demographics (i.e., larger percentage of rural population) and in Indian environmental conditions (i.e., extremely hot and humid climate and facilities without air-conditioning). In fact we could not find any credible study assessing the achievable accuracy in any of the developing countries….The ‘quality’ assessment of fingerprint data is not sufficient to fully understand the achievable de-duplication accuracy”. Yet, the decision to adopt the technology had been made even before the Proof of Concept was done.

In court, the Attorney General waved a `micro-ATM’, aiming to impress the looker-on with the genius of the technology that was so little and could perform the miracle of taking money to the doorstep. What he did not say was that it is not automatic, it does not dispense cash, and it is controlled by a person who acts as the teller and who is to hand over cash. This is the Business Correspondent. A 2009 RBI report and the Economic Survey for 2015-16 speak in one voice about the problems with the BC model, and the unpreparedness for last mile connectivity.

How, in this midst, has the Finance Minister decided that aadhaar is the solution? And, if he goes ahead with this change, where is the protection for the citizen if the technology fails them?

Usha Ramanathan

March 2, 2016

81 - Opinion: Aadhaar, rights and the state by Usha Ramanathan - Indian Express

Opinion: Aadhaar, rights and the state by Usha Ramanathan - Indian Express

Opinion: Aadhaar, rights and the state

The problem is that Aadhaar was never about individual choice, and was never intended to be voluntary.

Written by Usha Ramanathan | Updated: October 8, 2015 12:58 pm

Has the project really been voluntary? Has the project done what is needed to protect privacy? Should the executive be given freedom to frame whatever policy it will? And, would Mahatma Gandhi have been with Nilekani in wanting the population of India fingerprinted and iris-scanned?

Nandan Nilekani’s plea that the Supreme Court “tweak” its order of August 11 in his article in these pages (‘Why Supreme Court judgment on Aadhaar calls for an appeal’, September 15) is innocent of the experience that people have had with the unique identification (UID) project in the past five years. Why does the court order trouble him? Has the project really been voluntary? Has the project done what is needed to protect privacy? Should the executive be given freedom to frame whatever policy it will? And, would Mahatma Gandhi have been with Nilekani in wanting the population of India fingerprinted and iris-scanned?

The last is easily answered. In 1906, Gandhi was in South Africa, fighting the registration and fingerprinting of Indians in the Transvaal. This provocation led to mass resistance and protest, deliberate disobedience of the law, trial and punishment, and, as Charles DiSalvo records in The Man before the Mahatma, Gandhi was arguing: “It was not a question of thumb or fingerprints, but this was a thing that touched on their liberty.” That he would have endorsed a system where registration with fingerprints and iris-scans was pushed through on the threat of exclusion from food and fuel, schooling, old-age support, work, marriage, caste certificate, vaccination, child care — that seems a perfect description of what would not have found sympathy with Gandhi.

The UID was never about individual choice. It was never intended to be voluntary; it was only intended to be marketed as being voluntary. Even in 2010, the UIDAI strategy overview document admitted that while the official line would be that enrolment was not mandated, “This will not however, preclude governments or registrars from mandating enrolment.” And that has, in fact, been the strategy. Except that the Supreme Court decided that the project needed to be reined in, when confronted with concerns about lawlessness, national security, personal security and privacy, using the population of the country to experiment with biometrics, engaging companies with dubious credentials to hold and handle our data, surveillance, tracking, profiling, the untested claims about plugging leakages and the threat of exclusion.

The UIDAI and the government have responded by refusing to comply with the orders of the court, and that is how, contrary to law, the database has been built and multiple databases “seeded” with the number.

The Supreme Court has passed orders telling the government and the UIDAI and all other agencies what they may not do five times. Each time the orders have been brazenly flouted. On September 23, 2013, the court said that no one shall “suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card”. The government, oil marketing companies and the UIDAI shed the pretence of voluntariness and rushed to the court asking that it accept that the UID be mandatory. On November 26, 2013, the court refused to oblige. So, the order of the court was simply ignored, and coercion continued. On March 24, 2014, the court, having received complaints from the public that its order had had no effect, directed that “all authorities… modify their forms/ circulars/ likes so as not to compulsorily require the Aadhaar number”. This was not done. Instead, it was asserted that the “system” would not accept a form without the UID or enrolment ID. And, anyone without either of the two would be shepherded to an enrolment booth, which amounted to mandatory enrolment on the UID database. This was then passed off as “voluntary” and as being done with “informed consent”.

On March 16, the court again said: “In the meantime, it is brought to our notice that in certain quarters, Aadhaar identification is being insisted upon by the various authorities… We expect that both the Union of India and states and all their functionaries should adhere to the order passed by this court on September 23, 2013.” This gentle chiding produced no results.

Before all this, the parliamentary standing committee had asked that the proposed law, and the project itself, be sent back to the drawing board. The executive has carried on as if the law has nothing to do with it.

On August 11, the court asked the government to stop using the number and the information that is with the UIDAI for anything other than the PDS and LPG — exceptions, it must be said, that leave the poor unprotected, especially as none other than the Election Commission seems to respect this order. Six years after the project began, the UIDAI now admits that the biometrics of our “working population… adds another challenge to achieving uniqueness” and has set up a “competence centre” to research it.

When the case is heard by a larger bench, to which it was referred on Wednesday, the court is going to have to find answers to what the project is doing to people’s rights, the lawlessness of the state, the relationship between the people and the state, and about the emerging global geopolitics centred around population data.

The writer works on the jurisprudence of law, poverty and rights.

80 - Press Conference – State Violates SC orders on UID

Press Conference – State Violates SC orders on UID

*PRESS INVITE*

*Press Conference – State Violates SC orders on UID*

*WHEN: Friday, *18th September 2015, 12.30 pm

*WHERE: *Indian Women’s Press Corps (IWPC), 5 Windsor Place, Ashoka Road

*Speakers: *Aruna Roy, Usha Ramanathan, Reetika Khera, Anjali Bhardwaj, and persons adversely affected by the UID project

Five times the Supreme Court has issued orders in relation to the UID project, and each time the government and the UIDAI have chosen to brazen it out by ignoring the orders. The most recent was the order of August 11, 2015, when the court said that the UID number may not be used in anything other than in PDS and LPG distribution, even where it shall not be made
compulsory; and that the information may not be used for no other purpose.

The government and the UIDAI continues to flout this order with impunity. The aggressive enrollment and seeding in every data base is in violation of the orders of the court. In the meantime, people face multiple barriers because of their troubles with the UID.

Recently we witnessed the spectacle of the Attorney General arguing in the Supreme Court that the people of India do not have a fundamental right to privacy and that the case be referred to a Constitution Bench. There is little doubt that this was a tactic adopted so that the project can proceed unhindered by the case before the court.

There are, among many others, issues of personal liberty, privacy, national security, exclusion, data as property, the inversion of the relationship between the state and the citizen, the deliberate flouting of court orders, the conversion of voluntary enrolment into mandatory enrolment on threat of
being left out, untested biometrics, no informed consent about the uses to which the data will be subjected, the insecurity of rampant outsourcing, and the absence of an exit option to get out of the UIDAI data base.

Most recently, the UIDAI has set up a Unique Biometrics Centre of Competence about which the UIDAI says: "Nature and diversity of India's working population adds another challenge to achieving uniqueness through biometrics features. Like other technology fields such as telecommunication, we do not have experience like developed countries to leverage for designing UIDAI's biometric systems. For example, the largest existing biometrics database in the world is one order smaller in magnitude than India's needs. Therefore, it is necessary to create a UIDAI Biometrics Centre of Competence (UBCC) that focuses on the unique challenges of UIDAI."

This is evidence of something that critics of the project have been saying all along: that the UID project is essentially an experiment on a whole population.

To discuss this and allied issues we invite you to join us on Friday the 18th of September at 12.30 pm at the Indian Women's Press Corps.

For more background information visit & read the attached documents:

1. Decoding the Aadhaar judgment: No more seeding, not till the privacy issue is settled by the court
http://indianexpress.com/article/blogs/decoding-the-aadhar-judgment-no-more-seeding-not-till-the-privacy-issue-is-settled-by-the-court/

2. Protect the Right to Privacy as a Fundamental Right!
http://www.rediff.com/news/column/protect-the-right-to-privacy-as-a-fundamental-right/20150807.htm

3. The Statesman Series:
http://www.thestatesman.com/news/3686-a-virtual-monster-in-the-cloud.html

4. MoneyLife Series: www.moneylife.in/author/gopal-krishna.html

5. UID: from inclusion to exclusion
http://india-seminar.com/2015/672/672_reetika_khera.htm

6. Article in BENGALI TIMES OF INDIA (ei samay)
http://www.epaper.eisamay.com/Details.aspx?id=16879&boxid=13583456

7. The Big Picture - Confusion over NPR and Aadhaar
Rajya Sabha TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpe37lkGDkQ

8. Aadhaar is Dangerous
<http://goog_1273736701>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9wZLpPkxm0

9. Repository of aadhaar related articles: aadhararticles.blogspot.com
compiled by Ram Krishnaswamy

10. NATGRID, UIDAI & NPR Emerging As India’s NSA
http://www.countercurrents.org/krishna271213.htm

thanks & regards

Gopal Krishna
Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL)
Mb: 08227816731, 09818089660
E-mail: 1715krishna@gmail.com

79 - Importance of respecting privacy by Usha Ramanathan - Live Mint

Importance of respecting privacy

Even from its inception, the Aadhaar project has shown a remarkable disrespect for the law

Usha Ramanathan


Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint

Praveen Chakravarty, a former member of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), in Aadhaar and its implicit bargains (Mint, 26 August 2015) painted a touching picture of a poor rural woman reaching out in gratitude at the prospect of collecting her NREGA wages directly from a “business correspondent at her doorstep”, and “not through an intermediary”, using her Aadhaar number. That was in 2010.

He bemoans the Supreme Court order, dated 11 August 2015, which restrains the use of the Aadhaar number for anything other than PDS and LPG distribution—and these exceptions do indeed pose a problem—but here too, it may be added, that the enrolment or use of the number cannot be mandated or be made a condition.

Let’s not worry, for the moment, about why he thinks the business correspondent is not an intermediary. Instead, let’s look at what the project has done over these years.

In the beginning, the project was marketed as being inclusive and voluntary. As time passed, it has become plain that the only kind of inclusion in the project is in enrolling people on the UIDAI database. Thus it is not about its inclusivity in relation to entitlements and benefits. In fact, the Aadhaar number has become a barrier to accessing entitlements and benefits.

By now, we have gone through two-and-a-half years when people without an Aadhaar number have been threatened with denial of kerosene, LPG subsidy, scholarships, pensions, salaries, provident fund, marriage registration, attendance, insurance, rations and even NREGA work.

It may have been that the UIDAI was selling a dream to the NREGA worker in 2010. But in 2015, a group application was made to the Supreme Court because NREGA workers were refused work, and the explanation: “demand will be accepted for only those who have Aadhaar”.

Figures submitted by UIDAI and the government to the Supreme Court reveal how many names had been struck off the list because they were dead, or had migrated, with a remarkably low number represented as “duplicates”, and they were all called “bogus” or “ghosts”. Not one person has however been identified as deserving to be added to the list. This is hardly a tale of inclusion or volition.

Even from its inception, the UID project has shown a remarkable disrespect for the law. Maybe the law is an inconvenience for the project, but that may be the only protection for the citizen—on what kind of information may be collected and databased, how the information may be used, shared and transferred, when the number may be demanded and by whom, when it may be asked to be removed from the database, what is to happen when there is identity fraud, what kind of agencies may be allowed to store and manage the data, and much more.

In December 2011, a parliamentary standing committee rejected the proposed bill and asked that the project be taken back to the drawing board. The report was simply ignored. In September 2013, March 2014 and March 2015, the Supreme Court ordered that the Aadhaar number cannot be a condition for services; these orders have been deliberately and pervasively flouted. Now, there is the order of the court of 11 August 2015 and that too is being breached with casual disregard. Through all this, the court has done nothing to call the UIDAI or the government to account, and so the exercise has carried on without a law, while blatantly violating the orders of the court.

Chakravarty also said that the Election Commission uploads all kinds of voter information on the Web. This indubitably illustrates the importance of respecting privacy.

Usha Ramanathan works on the jurisprudence of law and poverty.

Comments are welcome at otherviews@livemint.com

Usha Ramanathan

TOPICS: AADHAARUIDAIPRIVACYNREGALPG